Courtesy Car After a Crash

Martynt74

Martynt74

Martynt74

Soldato
Joined
20 Feb 2004
Posts
23,152
Location
Hondon de las Nieves, Spain
Hi All,

After a bit of advice. My daughter was hit on he 7th October. The insurance finally collected the car on the 12th October and dropped off a courtesy car. She got a call on the 13th from the garage to say that her car is a write off.

I pre-warned her that she needed to start looking at possible cars to buy quickly (it usually takes her ages to decide) because once she got the money there was a decent chance she'd lose the courtesy car. She's just had a call to say that they're going to call her on Friday giving the outcome of any decision and would come to collect the hire car.

Given this leaves her with no car and at the moment doesn't even have a figure she's expecting to receive. Does she have any options to push to keep the courtesy car for longer? She's only 21 so most car rental places won't even touch her. Whilst the insurance hasn't indicated any decision around fault, i'd be very surprised if it was anything other than the other party. Does this give her extra grounds to request a hire car for at least a week to allow time to buy a new car?

She was traveling down the right lane of this road which was free of traffic, the other party was in the left lane which was a standstill, he has then pulled out in front of her and hit her passenger side front wheel/arch
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I'm in a very similar situation at the moment. Car has been written off and I've had a hire car for about a month now. I was supposed to be able to keep this until 7 days after I receive my payout, however I'm away out of the country for 10days from Friday and they have insisted that they collect the car before I leave despite receiving no money yet. I'm not happy with the whole thing at all tbh
 
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As above, you should have the car until it settled, otherwise where do they think you are going to magic the money from to replace it.

God forbid you ring the insurance company and ask them......
 
When my car was written off (other driver's fault if that has any bearing) I negotiated three offers until I was happy. They sent me the money and returned my car to me. It was all cosmetic so I sold the car and upgraded.

I don't think there was much time between courtesy car collection and my car being returned. About 10 years since mind.
 
Haze said:
God forbid you ring the insurance company and ask them......
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It's my daughter, so not me able to speak to them, and being young she can be easily fobbed off. I thought it was a good idea to get an idea of what is reasonable that i can tell her.
 
Martynt74 said:
It's my daughter, so not me able to speak to them, and being young she can be easily fobbed off. I thought it was a good idea to get an idea of what is reasonable that i can tell her.
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Do you live away from your daughter? You carnt be sat in the same room when is on the phone?
 
Who has provided her the courtesy car?

Her insurer or the third party insurer?

If this is all through her own insurer, you'll be (somewhat) at the mercy of whatever the terms of her insurance policy say in terms of provision of a car. This should be relatively easy to look up.

If it's through the third party insurer, I think you'd have more grounds to demand use of a car until the settlement figure is paid to you at the very least.
 
Can't help but sadly recognised that roundabout from the overhead image it has cropped up in so many dashcam videos recently of people having collisions on the approach and jumping the red lights coming from the right LOL - seems to be a bit of a spot for accidents/bad driving.
 
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Kenai said:
Who has provided her the courtesy car?

Her insurer or the third party insurer?

If this is all through her own insurer, you'll be (somewhat) at the mercy of whatever the terms of her insurance policy say in terms of provision of a car. This should be relatively easy to look up.

If it's through the third party insurer, I think you'd have more grounds to demand use of a car until the settlement figure is paid to you at the very least.
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I believe it's direct from her insurer as at the point of issue they hadn't made a decision around who was at fault, so i agree that could be the sticking point. (Insurer is Churchill). I wasn't sure whether in the outcome of it being identified the third party was at fault, whether she'd have grounds to request another hire car from the other parties insurance.
The age thing makes it tough to get one herself and then look to recover costs.
 
Haze said:
Do you live away from your daughter? You carnt be sat in the same room when is on the phone?
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Probably not for a couple of days, which unfortunately would be getting very close to the point of the insurer collecting the hire car
 
Martynt74 said:
I believe it's direct from her insurer as at the point of issue they hadn't made a decision around who was at fault, so i agree that could be the sticking point. (Insurer is Churchill). I wasn't sure whether in the outcome of it being identified the third party was at fault, whether she'd have grounds to request another hire car from the other parties insurance.
The age thing makes it tough to get one herself and then look to recover costs.
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Guaranteed Hire Car Plus | Churchill

Here at Churchill we have two levels of courtesy car cover, guaranteed hire car and guaranteed hire car plus
www.churchill.com www.churchill.com

Churchill's standard provision is pretty limited and no courtesy car is included for the element of 'is not repairable'. This will be why they're talking about collecting the car as soon as they've reached their 'decision' that it's not repairable.
 
Kenai said:

Guaranteed Hire Car Plus | Churchill

Here at Churchill we have two levels of courtesy car cover, guaranteed hire car and guaranteed hire car plus
www.churchill.com www.churchill.com

Churchill's standard provision is pretty limited and no courtesy car is included for the element of 'is not repairable'. This will be why they're talking about collecting the car as soon as they've reached their 'decision' that it's not repairable.
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Cheers, will see if they can offer anything extra and reclaim costs from the third party for a reasonable timeframe of say a week.

It's annoying as i looked at hire costs and it comes out around £230 for a week but no-one will rent because of her age.
 
Did her insurance give her the hire car or the garage that were potentially going to repair the vehicle before it got written off? If it's the garage now the cars been written off they will want their hire car back.
 
Glanza said:
Did her insurance give her the hire car or the garage that were potentially going to repair the vehicle before it got written off? If it's the garage now the cars been written off they will want their hire car back.
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It came when hers was collected, so i'll assume it's the garage which makes sense, they're only likely to have a limited number of hire cars and so unlikely to extend even if we offered to pay.
 
Speak to the insurance company again, if they are in favour of her not being at fault they'll normally pass your details onto a hire company who'll claim the costs back from the other side.
 
Yeah the insurer will be in cahoots with the likes of Helphire, they will get a kickback for a referral so the management company can then put her in a hire car and rinse the 3rd party insurer for a huge sum.
Just be mindful of liability, it's not unheard of for people to get a hire car from these sort of places and then end up having to dispute a bill a somepoint down the line.
 
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